A Progressive friend is relentlessly pushing “Trump is awful” stories on me. I, a conservative, invariably counter by pointing out that Hillary’s list of sins and failures is infinitely worse.

I realized yesterday that my arguments are irrelevant. My friend will never vote for someone who is not 100% pro-abortion, pro-socialized medicine, or pro-open borders. Given a choice between a rotting dead body that is pro-Abortion and a genuine angel from Heaven that is pro-Choice, he’d vote for the rotting body every time.

Even as we endlessly talk down the other side’s candidates (because few people are really comfortable talking their own candidate up in this bizarre election year), what really matters is the ideological divide underlying this election. The following list might help you decide on which side of that divide you live. Once you decide, do remember that you will never get people to accept your candidate, no matter how flawed their own candidate, until you get them to accept your ideology.

The older of my two dogs is very high-strung and she got so frightened by the wind that carried the fog in tonight that I’ve had to sequester her and me in my home office so that Mr. Bookworm, who needs to get up for work tomorrow, can sleep. She shows no signs of settling, so I’m blogging.

No matter how you slice it, Trump is the less risky gamble. Writing in the Claremont Review of Books, Publius Decius Mus quite graphically presents the issue that I have been arguing all summer:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

Precisely. Trump, with all his flaws, is better than Hillary. Up until a few months ago, one could argue that Hillary is just another garden-variety Leftist and that the American republic will survive despite her.

That’s all changed now. Knowing as we do of her extraordinary corruption — whether in running the State Department as a Pay-for-Play profit center for herself, her husband, and her daughter, or deliberately exposing all of America’s state secrets to try to hide her gross malfeasance — electing her to the presidency means that America has fully embraced banana republic status.

In the wake of a Hillary victory, thanks to Comey and the American voters (including all those #NeverTrumpers), there will no longer be a rule of law in America that applies equally to all citizens. We will in one fell swoop have destroyed a legal system that goes back 1215 when England first put into writing in the Magna Carta a policy saying that no one, not even a king, is above the law. As of now, Hillary and her cronies are above the law and it will be a disaster if the American people put their imprimatur on that utterly corrupt, anti-democratic principle.

One more thing: As Publius Decius Mus explains, Hillary’s been wrong about every single policy stance she’s ever taken (including the ones where she’s changed her stance repeatedly according to the latest poll data), while Trump, in his fumbling, bumbling way, has been right about all of the most important policy issues facing America. So maybe he’s not so bad after all.

I like to Fall backwards, since it means I rise with the sun, which is a lot easier than getting up in the deep of night. Still, I’ve been discombobulated today, my computer has been balky, and my brain sluggish. Both the computer and I seem to have Daylight Saving jet lag. Jet lag or not, though, I have articles to share:

Should anyone in America ever be too big to jail?

I was absolutely horrified when a McClatchy article suggested that Hillary is just too darn important to prosecute for her myriad, deliberate, and quite damaging national security violations:

But most who spoke to McClatchy say it’s unlikely the former first lady, senator and Cabinet secretary will face charges because of her high profile and the hurdle to prove she knew the emails contained classified information when she sent them to others.

“She’s too big to jail,” said national security attorney Edward MacMahon Jr., who represented former CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling in 2011 in a leak case that led to an espionage prosecution and 3½-year prison term. He cited a pattern of light punishments for top government officials who have mishandled classified information while lower level whistleblowers such as Sterling have faced harsh prosecutions for revealing sensitive information to expose waste, fraud or abuse in government.

Is this what our democracy has come to — the claim that Hillary Clinton, whose public career has been marked by corruption since her debut at Watergate — gets a pass because she’s just too darn elite and special?

Of course, that’s not the only problem with the McClatchy article. As my friend Wolf Howling wrote me,

Another thing I observed back in 2008 or 2009 is that the gay “marriage” problem is, as much as anything, a question of semantics. Although America long ago constitutionally separated church and state, our concept of marriage remained stuck in the British tradition, one in which church and state were the same thing. Marriage was seamlessly a civil and a religious event.

In the past century, and with accelerating speed in the past two decades, Americans have turned to the word “marriage” to represent two entirely different events: The first is the religious, or quasi-religious, coming together of a man and a woman before their friends, their God, or their New Age guru; the second is a bureaucratic process notifying the government that a couple wants the economic and contractual benefits and burdens the government bestows on those who live together with the presumptive intent of having children. The word “marriage,” therefore, has two fundamentally unrelated meanings, one purely religious and one purely civil.

Because this semantic difference is causing real problems thanks to same-sex and polygamous “marriage” demands, I have been arguing since 2008 that America’s federal and state governments should get out of the marriage business entirely and, instead, sanction only “civil unions.” Under this scheme, states can sanction whatever the heck “civil unions” they want — man/woman, man/man, woman/woman, cow/pig, man/women, etc.. Each state would be an experiment in determining what unions most benefit society as a whole, the state’s economic well-being, and, most especially, children’s ability to thrive.

But that’s not what Justice Kennedy did. Instead, he looked at the U.S. Constitution and found hidden in it, hidden behind the unicorns and rainbows, a constitutional right holding that everybody’s dignity is such that they can marry whomever or whatever they want. Most of the Founders would be horrified about this hitherto unsuspected “civil right,” although I suspect old Benjamin Franklin would have been amused.

Still, as the old saying goes, if the mountain won’t come to Mohamed, than Mohamed most go to the mountain. Because Kennedy has insisted that government “owns” marriage, it’s time for the church to let go of marriage entirely and try something new. Now, don’t get too upset. Hear me out, because I think the Left has shown traditionalists the way to go. You need to think about the stories that have been dominating news headlines for weeks, even years, of late.

Rachel Dolezal has shown us that all people, no matter their genetic racial make-up, can be whatever race they prefer. Of course, this can be a bit of a double-edged sword as the media showed with George Zimmerman. Race becomes a fluid concept depending on whether you’re the right kind of victim or not. If you’ve been beaten up by a white guy, you’re undoubtedly black or Hispanic (or gay, or all of the above), but if you’re a light-skinned Hispanic who killed a murderous black man in self-defense, you’re first white and, when that fails, you’re that new breed of race called “white Hispanic.”

Of course, successful racial re-identification isn’t limited to blacks and Hispanics. In academia, the favored racial “borrowing” is Native American. Andrea Smith, Elizabeth Warren, and Ward Churchill have shown us that, no matter the absence of a single drop of Native American blood in your body, if you think you’re an Indian, then you’re an Indian. (Actually, Irving Berlin had already figured this one out a long time ago.)

The most exciting type of re-identification, of course, has to do with sex. Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner has shown us that anyone, no matter his or her X and Y chromosomes, or the conspicuously present or absent dangly bits in a person’s crotch, can be whatever sex he or she prefers.

This ability to define reality to suit oneself isn’t limited to ones own body. It can also apply to events. For example, despite overwhelming proof to the contrary, poor deluded Emma Sulkowicz is a rape victim. Lena Dunham’s drunken, consensual hook-up? Rape and she’s a victim too.

The important thing to remember with all these re-imaginings of ones self is that, no matter how ludicrous they are, everyone else is honor bound to accept them as truth. Despite Caitlyn’s massive upper body, missing waist, present penis and testes, and absent (but not surgically removed) ovaries, uterus, and milk ducts, Caitlyn is henceforth a man. That’s reality. You’re not allowed a gracious, polite accommodation of her delusions. Instead, when you use those feminine pronouns to describe Caitlyn, you’d better mean them. Anything else, any doubt about reality, is grotesque cisgender heteronormative sexism. Oh, and while you’re at it, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

What’s scary is that this kind of delusional thinking (of the “we have always been at war with Eastasia” stripe) is not limited to lay people. A doctor I know insists that Caitlyn Jenner, having undergone breast augmentation and hormone treatment (although the dangly bits apparently remain intact), has actually “changed” from one sex to another. The fact that the changes are superficial or transient, and that they do nothing to alter Bruce/Caitlyn’s gender-based bone structure, internal organs, and DNA is irrelevant. To the doctor, the magic is real: Caitlyn and others similarly situated are truly changed, rather than merely having undergone procedures bringing their physical shape into greater conformity with their personal desires and sense of self.

I’ll add here, as I often do, that I have no particular beef with Caitlyn Jenner, although I find distasteful her relentless exhibitionism. If you want to have me pretend you’re a woman, and are not insisting that I abandon reality and my society’s stable social structure to do so, I will happily refer to you as “Miss.” Heck, I’ll call you Loretta or perhaps I’ll call you a cab — anything you like as long as your delusion isn’t foisted on me.

What the Left has done is put its imprimatur on the Humpty Dumpty school of defining words. As H-D famously said to Alice in Through the Looking Glass,

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

It seems to me that, now that the Church faces the threat extinction at the hands of Leftists with the Obergefell bit in their teeth, it’s time to go Humpty and turn the Left’s tactics back upon it.

I once said that the state should get out of the marriage business. Since that’s not going to happen, traditional religions need to get out of the marriage business. The big announcement should go out: In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell, it’s become too financially risky for traditional religious institutions to conduct marriage ceremonies any longer. To the extent Obergefell governs a constitutional right to “marriage,” the traditionalists are taking their marbles and going home. They simply won’t play the marriage game any more.

That’s not as draconian as it sounds.

Just as Columbo always turned away, only to turn back again with that one last question, religious organizations might have a tag end to that “end of marriage” announcement:

“Oh, by the way . . . . One more thing. Having searched through our religious texts, we’ve discovered that what God actually requires of the faithful isn’t ‘marriage’ at all, but a “covenanting ceremony.” And in case you’re wondering, it’s just a coincidence that this covenanting ceremony looks precisely like the weddings of old, right down to the one man/one woman aspect, the prayers and blessings, the officiating priest, minister, rabbi or imam, or anything else. No matter what you, the Leftist might think, these are no longer marriage ceremonies, any more than Caitlyn is still a man, George Zimmerman is Hispanic, or Emma Sulkowicz is a delusional girl rather than a rape victim. They have been transformed.”

I’d like to add one other point while I’ve got your attention. Straight people, when they marry, proclaim their love and commitment to each other in the presence of God, their family, and their friends. The civil aspect is simply a pragmatic step to obtain the benefits of civil marriage, irrespective of some of the corresponding civil burdens. The Left, with its “#LoveWins” battle cry has made clear that, when it marries, it wants Big Brother to proclaim its love for them. That’s really kind of sad when you think about it, isn’t it?

As we all know to America’s cost, when confronted with the question of gay marriage under the Constitution, Justice Kennedy found the right lurking in the heart of the Constitution, right between the Amendments about unicorns and leprechauns. In other words, he made it up out of whole cloth.

The correct ruling, of course, would have been to say that the Constitution is silent on all marriages, let alone gay marriage, but is quite loud about religious freedom. Therefore, to the extent that “marriage” is inextricably intertwined with religion, the answer isn’t to add gay marriage to the Constitution but, instead, to take all state-sanctioned marriage out of the Constitution, reserving it solely for religious institutions. The states would have to be content with issuing licenses for “civil unions.” These unions would be subject to each state’s determined about what is best for the state’s (and its children’s) overall well-being. End of story.

Of course, the sad truth is that not a single one of the Leftists on the Supreme Court (and that includes Justice Kennedy) is either as intelligent or as principled as I am. 😉 That’s a shame too, because we’re going to have one Hell of a mess in this country in the coming years (as I predicted long ago) thanks to the Supreme Court’s inevitable bow to political correctness and delusional takes on reality.

My dog woke me early, which bothered me at the time but now seems like a good thing, since I can get a little blogging in before the work day begins. Without further ado, a few posts I think are worth you time:

On Democrats and racism

If you read one thing today, you have to read Jeffrey Lord’s open letter to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz asking her when Democrats are going to confess to and apologize for the fact that racism is their legacy to America — and one that they pursued aggressively for more than a century.

After you’ve read it, if you won’t turn yourself into a pariah amongst family and friends, share it around. After all, two can play at the Alinsky game, but for conservatives, the Alinsky game is one in which each individual conservatives must be an activist, because there won’t be a media/Hollywood conglomerate around to do the heavy lifting.

Sometimes the best romances come from unexpected sources. There are frustrated souls, living desiccated, dull lives who, through their writing, can explore their deepest unrealized fantasies. Such is the case with Justice Kennedy’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. It is littered with burning, passionate phrases that transform an ordinary Supreme Court opinion into an unexpected romance.

Of course, the confines of a Supreme Court decision mean that the true import of those burning phrases is hidden from most Americans. I therefore have taken it upon myself to pen the actual romance Justice Kennedy so clearly wanted to write.

I have made some changes, of course. First, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve been forced to write from a completely cisgendered heteronormative perspective, because that is all I know. Second, not only am I not the best romance writer, I’m experiencing Justice Kennedy’s passions second hand, so this brief romantic vignette is slightly stilted and sterile, when it really should be something that could be recited to the throbbing, romantic music from that racist, Confederate flag-based movie, Gone With The Wind.

Corinna stood at the side of the crowded ballroom, watching longingly as dozens of other couples swirled about the room, keeping perfect time to the lilting rhythm of the latest waltz. She felt terribly alone, the only wallflower in the crowd.

Of course, she knew it wasn’t true that she was the only lonely one. Just a few paces away from the delicate gilt chair on which she sat, her voluminous lilac-colored skirts spilling gracefully over the side, stood a young man only a few years older than she was.

From his posture, Corinna could tell that the man was feeling as awkward as she was. Even though he affected a casual slouch, his posture was so rigid it was obvious that he was practically holding up the wall against which he leaned. His face was still, but his blue eyes blazed under straight black brows.

Looking at him, Corinna knew that this man felt as she did. Indeed, her soul understand that, though they’d never met, she knew this man with every fiber of her being. She understand that, despite the cheerful, crowded room, both felt the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.

Corinna’s sense of fellowship with the young man was so strong she couldn’t stop herself, and giving into a most basic human need, she disregarded the precepts bred into her that a young lady never approached a strange gentleman. Standing up resolutely, Corinna turned his way.

For a moment, Corinna paused, afraid. Like all other young ladies, she had those yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express[] our common humanity. If she got a reputation for being “fast,” would she suddenly find herself socially isolated, an outcast, unmarriageable, never able to be one who learned experienced first-hand the transcendent importance of marriage?

No. Something drew her to that lonely stranger, with a force stronger than her fear. Gathering her courage, Corinne patted the exquisite flowers bedecking her golden curls, and went up to the young man, bit her already-rosy lips, and walked resolutely towards the stranger. Placing herself in front of him, Corinne’s courage failed and she was suddenly at a loss for words. She stared at him; he stared back at her.

The man smiled at her, revealing even white teeth. Corinna blinked in surprise. He was more handsome than she had realized. She smiled back, her clear gray eyes twinkling.

“No, I don’t believe we have,” he replied in a deep, velvety voice. “I’m Sebastian, Lord Abermarle. Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, may I ask you to dance?”

“Oh, no!” Corinne exclaimed. “I mean, I would love to dance, but since we haven’t yet been formally introduced, I’m afraid we cannot. But perhaps we can sit together and . . . and speak.”

Lord Abermarle’s sable eyebrows rose, but he immediately led Corinne towards two empty chairs, seating her in one, and taking the other for himself. They were silent for a moment.

Corinne took a deep, gulping breath. “Forgive me, Lord Abermarle, for what I am about to say. My family and friends often tell me I am too forward and fanciful, but I could not help but believe that we may be sharing the same feelings, feelings that separate us from the others in the ballroom.”

“Go on, Ms. Merryweather,” he said encouragingly.

“I do believe that those choices people make can shape an individual’s destiny. I believe too in soul mates. I believe that some of us are lucky enough to find the person for whom we were destined. “

Corinne stopped, panting slightly from the emotional stress of speaking to a stranger about matters that went far beyond the polite banalities of the ballroom.

Lord Abermarle remained silent, his gaze moving between her sparkling eyes and her heaving, white bosom. Corinne wasn’t sure what she saw in his eyes, but as it was neither anger nor disdain, she plowed onwards.

“When we are among the lucky ones to find our soulmates,” she said, “two people become something greater than they once were. Even people lacking in spiritually, who shy away from the concept of a soul, know that this coming together is still a unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm.”

“I know not,” Corinne replied. “No, that’s a lie. Years ago, I went to a gypsy who told me that, when I saw the face of my future husband, I would recognize him immediately. I laughed at her. I was a giddy fifteen and never wanted marriage for I feared I would be tied-down, like my mother, trapped in a loveless union that, every year, drained away her warmth and joy.”

“You speak truly,” said Lord Abermarle. “We in the ton have less freedom than the simplest country couple. We marry for property and title. We most certainly to not marry for love, and no dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons. That bliss is the commoners’ lot, not ours.”

Corinne nodded gravely, speaking to this man as if she had known him years, not mere minutes. “Yes, that’s what I thought too. But the gypsy promised me that there are some lucky ones who find the person who is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations. When I saw you, I knew that I was one of those lucky ones.”

Lord Abermarle looked down at her. “And you believe that I am your soul mate?”

“Yes,” said Corinne resolutely. “Yes, I do. I know this sounds as if I’m fairy-touched, but I do believe that, were we to marry, ours would be a marriage that embodies a love that may endure even past death.”

Corinne stopped speaking, horrified by her boldness, but feeling that magical pull that told her she had done the right thing.

“I would scoff,” said Abermarle, “but I cannot. The moment I walked into this ballroom and saw you, I knew that you were my destiny. I have spent the entire evening fighting the impulse to gather you into my arms, sweep you out of this room, and escape with you to Gretna Green so that we can be joined together swiftly and forever.”

He paused a moment, gently stroking her soft, white cheek with his strong, lean hand.

“I should have known Fate wouldn’t allow me to turn away from this gift. Even as I resisted, you came to me. I thank God for your forwardness. Were it not for that, my failure to accept my destiny would have condemned [me] to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions — forever denied that enduring bond that ensures that two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”

Swift, happy tears rose to Corinne’s eyes. Lord Abermarle again lifted his hand to Corinne’s cheek, this time gently wiping away the traces of those tears.

“Come, my love,” he said. “Let us go find your parents so that I may ask for your hand. This is the moment of transformation — strangers into relatives, binding families and societies together.”

Lord Abermarle stood, extending his hand to the now-radiant Corinne. The two of them, still holding hands, plunged resolutely into the crowd, searching for her family, secure in their loving, transcendent future together, one that would be celebrated by all regardless of the fact that none could understand the strange dynamics that brought these two loving people together.

As you all know, the Supreme Court this morning issued a 5-4 decision, authored by Anthony Kennedy, finding a hitherto hidden right to same-sex marriage in the American Constitution. I have not yet read the decision, but nevertheless I have a few points to make regardless of the reasoning that necessitated 103 pages to explain.

This ruling may be the most consequential ruling ever to issue from the Supreme Court. Why? Because the Left will use it to destroy all religions except Islam (which they’re afraid to touch). They’ll use a magical new right to destroy one of the bedrock First Amendment rights.

This is not speculation, incidentally. We’ve already seen the playbook in action with the attack on Christians who politely refuse to provide their services to same-sex weddings. In a free society, the gay patrons would go down the block to find a bakery that will serve them. In the coming totalitarian society, the gays will use the machinery of the state to destroy working class Christian people. The Supreme Court’s ruling will provide the full arsenal they need to stop focusing on an individual here and there and, instead, to wage all-out war on any religious conservatives who get in their way.

More profoundly, this is the weapon gays need to complete their assault on religious institutions (rather than just upon religious people). Up until the Court’s ruling, traditional religious institutions had the First Amendment to protect them: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .”

Now, however, the Supreme Court has bypassed the prohibition against Congressional action and found buried in the bowels of the 14th Amendment a brand new right to gay marriage. (And who else finds it ironic that, just the other day, the Supreme Court concluded that Congress’s intent trumps everything in interpreting a statute, but today the Supreme Court entirely ignores the fact that the sole intended purpose behind the 14th amendment was to give black people full civil rights?)

What we have now is a terribly dangerous clash of constitutional rights: The explicit right to the free exercise of religion (which reaches right up into every religious institution’s right to follow its core doctrines) versus the magical new right for same-sex couples to marry. In today’s environment, want to bet which right wins? Obama’s “Justice” Department will come down like a ton of bricks on any religious school that preaches traditional marriage or any tax-exempt church that refuses to marry a gay couple.

Again, I know this for a fact because the gays and their fellow travelers on my Facebook feed have already been demanding that the feds repeal the tax exempt status given to religious institutions. (In this new dawn of “freedom,” the faithful will be forced to give up their faith.) What these people fully understand is that the reason religious institutions are tax-exempt is to ensure that the government cannot destroy any or all houses of worship by taxing them out of existence.

Nor is this a situation analogous to abortions, which upset religious conservatives, but didn’t destroy them. Religious institutions and Pro-Life people don’t perform abortions. Religious institutions and traditional marriage people do, however, perform marriages, whether in a church, temple, or mosque, or in a courthouse. They will be attacked and destroyed. (Again, don’t just take my word for it. Look at France.)

The situation also isn’t analogous to the short, ugly interlude in America when Southern states barred interracial marriage. Irrespective of skin color, heterosexual couples of whatever race have the necessary biological equipment to procreate: Tab A inserts into slot B. That is how Mother Nature intended human joining to occur. Not to deny gay couples the pleasures they find in bed, but Nature had nothing to do with Tab A has fun with Tab A or Slot B romps with Slot B. They are not two halves of the same whole. They are the functional equivalent of two Left shoes (pun intended).

I have not read the entire decision but wonder if there are any grounds in it on which polygamy can be ruled anything other than a fundamental right. And after that, incest and every other marriage taboo. Once marriage becomes a matter of personal gratification, the doors seem wide open.

It will be very expensive once we’re required to recognize polygamy. Living as we do in a welfare state, we’ll find ourselves in the same position as those European countries that recognize all the wives their newly immigrated Muslim citizens bring in. Welfare won’t be limited to a nuclear family. Instead, it will include Ali Baba, his 40 wives, and his 200 children — and in the next generation, those children’s families too.

Finally, to all the people on my Facebook page trumpeting ” love wins”: You are morons. Marriage is not about love. It’s about religion, money, parenting, and social structure, all of which are intended to protect society as a whole. Love is just a pleasant byproduct and one can love without the state’s imprimatur.

By the way, you know how you can tell that this is a made-up right? The 103-page opinion. If this were a real right, it wouldn’t take anywhere near that long to explain it. When you’re telling a legal lie, though, you have to add a lot of detail to hide the empty center. That’s why Leftist Supreme Court decisions are invariably longer and more complex than conservative ones: they’re making it up as they go.

For more on the terrible problems with the decision, including a lengthy (and extremely intelligent statement from Roberts’ dissent), go here.

And what do all of you think of the decision?

UPDATE: Had I read Scalia’s dissent, I would have seen that he too understands that the florid, overwrought, extremely long brief is something that is full of sound and fury in an effort to hide the reality, which is that nothing lies at its heart:

The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so. Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”23 (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? . . .

I’ll say it again: Leftist opinions (that is, opinions that advance Leftist causes, rather than just opinions written by Leftist judges) are always excessively long because they are making it up as they go.

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.

The agenda is never the agenda for the Left. And this is especially true for gay marriage. Homosexual marriage is a Trojan horse tactic. The true agenda is to establish the primacy of homosexual rights over the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded on this principle, and the gay marriage movement seeks to destroy it.

Consider that Annise Parker, the lesbian mayor of Houston, Texas, demanded to review pastors’ church sermons before public outrage forced her to back off. We have already seen how small businesses have been singled out and attacked for refusing to provide certain services to gays.

What is less known is that these gay couples are frequently part of the movement. They deliberately seek out businesses known for their Christian owners. They deliberately demand a service they know in advance will be refused. When the inevitable happens they use it as pretext to destroy the business and savage its owners. Doesn’t it amaze you how quickly legal groups immediately materialize to assist in the attack? The fact that they got unexpected push back through a spontaneous crowd sourcing campaign to support one pizza shop will not dissuade them from future efforts. If gay marriage is adopted, their current bullying behavior will look like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

This is a highly organized, nationwide campaign of vilification against Christians. But even Christians are not the ultimate target. If the First Amendment can be challenged this way; if a certain group’s “rights” can trump the U.S. Constitution, and if the Supreme Court can actually issue an edict making it so, then the entire Constitution has become meaningless. This is the Left’s true agenda and it always has been. This is the Cultural Marxists’ endgame. The issue is not the issue. The issue for them has always been destroying our country to impose socialism — with them in charge, of course. In order to do that they have to strip America of its culture, its traditions, and most importantly, the most important law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.

Once again, my post caption is misleading. This post has nothing to do with Cinco de Mayo. It just has to do with all the fascinating stories I’ve read in the last few days. These are in no particular order, so you’ll have to read all the way down to make sure you’ve gotten to all the good stuff.

The Leftist media lies and then lies some more

Often, what’s even more insidious than a flat-out lie is a statement that is a partial truth. It’s so much easier to deconstruct a total lie than to try to explain to someone where truth ends and deceit begins.

This week offered two posts that highlight the problem for those people unfortunate enough to get caught in the Leftist web of lies. The first is Sean Davis’s meticulous deconstruction of a “fact” checker’s desperate effort to cover for the Clintons after Davis, relying on tax returns, made the completely factual statement that

Between 2009 and 2012, the Clinton Foundation raised over $500 million dollars according to a review of IRS documents by The Federalist (2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008). A measly 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went towards programmatic grants.

Those numbers, drawn from the Clinton Foundation’s own returns, are absolutely correct. For Progressive PunditFact “fact checker” Louis Jacobson, the ultimate conclusion (i.e., that the Clintons are scam artists) was unbearable, so he retreated to the Lefts’ favorite redoubt when in danger: “truthiness” or that other stand-by “fake but accurate,” with its necessary corollary “accurate but false.”

In an unsolicited April 28 e-mail to me, PunditFact author Louis Jacobson told me unequivocally that the demonstrably factual claim he was examining was “clearly accurate” and “technically true.” But today, Jacobson declares, that fact is suddenly “Mostly False.”

Davis woodsheds Jacobson so thoroughly that, if Jacobson hadn’t proven himself to be an amoral political hack, I might have felt sorry for him. As it is, he had it coming:

One of the things Nazis understood is that, if you get them young enough, you own them. Some of them break away, of course, but they have to want to break away. (And yes, that’s exactly like the joke: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb really has to want to change.)

I thought of that when I found myself in a Facebook debate about whether bakers should be free to refuse customers who seek same-sex wedding cakes. I’ve already told you a little bit about this discussion:

I love it when the younger generation shows wisdom. A young 20-something friend of mine just posted on Facebook something about the rash of traditionally religious bakers who are being persecuted for refusing to make cakes for same-sex weddings. I won’t repeat what my friend said verbatim, but here’s the gist:

I don’t come down strongly on either side of this. I hate discrimination but the bakers own the business and say they reserve the right to serve any customers. The customers may have civil rights that should be protected, but a privately owned business should be able to operate as it wants and not be subject to huge fines. This is just another case of the so-called “business expert” government messing with America’s small businesses. If same-sex couples are offended by the business owner’s views, they don’t have to shop there and can tell their friends not to either. What they shouldn’t do is try to destroy the business.

Aside from cheering my young friend’s understanding of freedom (it probably helps that he’s a Marine), I also suggested that, because the freedom to practice our faith without government oversight shows up at the top of the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment, if the religious person is asserting anything other than an Aztec human sacrifice, the default position in a battle of rights needs to favor the religious person.

I felt really good after reading that young man’s comments:

Anyway, I’m feeling heartened that there’s a young person out there who is working hard to cast off the stifling Leftism that is part and parcel of a Marin childhood. Even better, while I may be the old lady on his Facebook feed, the vast bulk of his friends are young. Maybe he’ll get some of them to think too.

It seems that I was a little too optimistic. One of his young friends did chime in, but not to support individual liberty. Instead, he went into full Progressive mode, throwing around words such as privilege (everyone but him and his fellow travelers) and victimization (only him and his fellow travelers). When I kept countering his ideas, eventually forcing him into a corner, his true agenda emerged: full fascist mode.

I love it when the younger generation shows wisdom. A young 20-something friend of mine just posted on Facebook something about the rash of traditionally religious bakers who are being persecuted for refusing to make cakes for same-sex weddings. I won’t repeat what my friend said verbatim, but here’s the gist:

I don’t come down strongly on either side of this. I hate discrimination but the bakers own the business and say they reserve the right to serve any customers. The customers may have civil rights that should be protected, but a privately owned business should be able to operate as it wants and not be subject to huge fines. This is just another case of the so-called “business expert” government messing with America’s small businesses. If same-sex couples are offended by the business owner’s views, they don’t have to shop there and can tell their friends not to either. What they shouldn’t do is try to destroy the business.

Aside from cheering my young friend’s understanding of freedom (it probably helps that he’s a Marine), I also suggested that, because the freedom to practice our faith without government oversight shows up at the top of the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment, if the religious person is asserting anything other than an Aztec human sacrifice, the default position in a battle of rights needs to favor the religious person.

Why is this a “time warp edition”? Because even though I’m publishing it on Saturday, I actually wrote it on Friday. The reason delayed publishing is because I’m spending all day Saturday attending part II of my CERT training. I expect the training to be more of the same stuff as last week: really nice, well-informed, generous people inefficiently teaching four hours of useful information over the course of eight hours.

Rather than leaving my blog fallow for that time, I thought I’d prep a post in advance. The only reason I’m mentioning the 14-hour lead time is to explain why, if something dramatic happens in the news tomorrow, you won’t read about it at the Bookworm Room. And now, it’s time for yesterday’s news today!